Student in court over alleged Facebook hacking attacks

A student from York is facing five charges under the Computer Misuse Act relating to his alleged hacking of Facebook servers.

Glenn Steven Mangham, 25, is on trial at Westminster Magistrates' Court facing several charges, including that he "made, adapted, supplied or offered to supply" a program designed to bypass Facebook's security controls and infiltrate the social network's systems.

The Daily Telegraph reported that Mangham, who was arrested by the Met's Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) in early June, made repeated attempts to hack Facebook using "considerable technical expertise", according to the prosecution.

He reportedly tried to hack a Facebook "puzzle server" and "mailman server" and access a "phabricator server", although no further details were forthcoming.

Facebook said that no personal user data was exposed, and Mangham has been denied access to any computer or internet-connected device while on bail. He is due back in court next month for a committal hearing.

Yet another hacker in court, then, which, depending on which way you look at it, is evidence of more good work from the PCeU and the British legal system or symptomatic of the sheer scale of hacking attacks occurring every day.

We strongly suspect it's a little bit of both, although the latter is more likely.